Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America [ABRIDGED] [AUDIOBOOK]

Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America

AUTHORS:

John M. Barry (Author)

George Grizzard (Narrator)

PRODUCT DETAILS:

Audio CD

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio; Abridged edition (May 1, 1998)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 0743554108

ISBN-13: 978-0743554107

Product Dimensions: 5.8 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches

Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces

EDITORIAL REVIEWS

Book Description

An American epic of science, politics, race, honor, high society, and the Mississippi River, Rising Tide tells the riveting and nearly forgotten story of the greatest natural disaster this country has ever known -- the Mississippi flood of 1927. The river inundated the homes of nearly one million people, helped elect Huey Long governor and made Herbert Hoover president, drove hundreds of thousands of blacks north, and transformed American society and politics forever.

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Lillian Smith Award.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

John M. Barry is the author of The Ambition and the Power: A True Story of Washington, and co-author of The Transformed Cell, which has been published in twelve languages. As Washington editor of Dunn's Review, he covered national politics, and he has also written for The New York Times Magazine,Esquire,Newsweek,The Washington Post, and Sports Illustrated. He lives in New Orleans and Washington, D.C.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS

How American Politics Changed Forever, November 30, 2000

This review is from: Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America (Paperback)

No one remembers the 1927 flood, or even that it happened; but it was the events surrounding that single event which more than anything else gave us modern America, and John Barry's book is essential to understanding it.

Obviously the book gives a full account of the flood itself, of the history of the river and of the delta, of the people who carved a nation out of wilderness and who lived and died in the catastrophe; without a doubt, Barry does all this, and does it in gripping style: the book is hard to put down.

But Barry does far more. In telling the story, he shows how a heretofore anti-socialist America was forced by unprecedented circumstance to embrace an enormous, Washington-based big-government solution to the greatest natural catastrophe in our history, preparing the way (psychologically and otherwise) for the New Deal. He shows how this was accomplished through the Republican (but left-wing) Herbert Hoover, who would never have become President without the flood. Most importantly, he shows how Hoover's foolish, all-encompassing arrogance single-handedly drove the backbone of the Republican Party -- African Americans -- away from the GOP and into the arms of the segregationist, generally pro-KKK Democrats (a truly amazing feat). It is an amazing tale indeed.

It holds important lessons for the future as well. Hoover's loss of the black community is a lesson virtually unknown to modern readers (who generally assume they just drifted away under the New Deal), and holds important (and perhaps urgent) lessons for modern Democrats and Republicans alike.

But on a more fundamental level, the book teaches us the power of the river, a lesson we've forgotten even in the face of some reasonably large modern floods. Someday, possibly very soon, the levy system will likely be destroyed by the long-predicted earthquake along the New Madrid Fault: when that day comes, the lessons of Rising Tide will be life and death matters. Southerners in particular may ignore Rising Tide only at their peril.